BlackBerry, one of the most mobile phone brands of yesteryears has launched a new Android smartphone. The company continues to believe that there are enough smartphone users in this world that crave for a physical keyboard. The BlackBerry KEYone was built on that notion and the BlackBerry KEY2 continues from where the KEYone left off. The new smartphone is priced at US$ 649 (Rs 43700 approx.) for the base model and goes on sale globally in markets like the US later this month.
The BlackBerry KEY2 is one of the few smartphones that will offer a full-fledged physical keyboard. This time around, the length of the keyboard has been increased by 20%, which BlackBerry claims will increase comfort and typing accuracy. The leys have also been arranged in a new fret pattern to optimise spacing. The keys have a matte finish as well this time and the new speed key can launch an app, or call a favourite contact or access functions from anywhere in the UI.
The BlackBerry KEY2 has a 4.5 inch IPS LCD display with a 1620 x 1080 px resolution. The 3:2 aspect ratio is mainly because the smartphone will have a physical keyboard making it a large device to hold. The bezels aren’t very thin either and it retains the three touch capacitive buttons from the KEYone.
Under the hood, the smartphone runs on the Snapdragon 660 chipset. The SoC will be coupled with 6GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB of onboard storage. The storage will be expandable up to 256GB using a microSD card. The fingerprint sensor is housed inside the space bar just like its predecessor. Powering the smartphone is a 3500 mAh battery with support for Qualcomm QuickCharge 3.0. The headphone jack is present as well, which has become a rare sight in 2018.
The dual-camera setup on the back consists of a 12MP primary sensor with an f/1.8 aperture. The secondary sensor is a 12MP sensor with an f/2.6 aperture. The smartphone has an 8MP front-facing camera with the display acting as a flash for low-light selfies. The dual camera at the back can record 4K videos at 30fps while the front camera will record 1080P videos.
The BlackBerry KEY2 has a very specific target audience. At a price of US$649, you can easily get the high-end OnePlus 6 running on Snapdragon 845. However, only the KEY2 has a physical keyboard. It’ll be interesting to see BlackBerry’s pricing strategy in India if and when it launches the KEY2 here.
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